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Yacht’s faked sex tape stunt backfires

By | Published on Thursday 12 May 2016

Yacht

Yacht faked a sex tape leak to promote their new single and ironically came out of it looking like wankers.

The indie duo sparked some media interest earlier this week when they claimed that a sex tape featuring both of them had been stolen and leaked online “without our previous knowledge nor consent”. They later announced that they were selling the video on their own website in order to “take some kind of ownership over what has happened”, while they “commenced legal proceedings against the aforementioned person” who supposedly leaked it.

Although various outlets did take the story at face value, others were dubious, particularly as the band’s own timeline of events didn’t line up. And then, sure enough, it turned out that the ‘sex tape’ was designed to promote Yacht’s new single ‘I Wanna Fuck You Till I’m Dead’.

“We released it as a slowly-unveiling conspiracy, inspired in equal part by ‘The X-Files’, ‘Nathan For You’ and The KLF”, they said in a now deleted Facebook post. “It’s a project that allowed us to play with science fiction, the attention economy, clickbait journalism and celebrity sex tapes, all at once”.

Although Yacht said that they had received an “outpouring of genuine support”, the publicity stunt has received much criticism, with claims that it all makes light of the growing issue of so called ‘revenge porn’.

“This is a bullshit marketing stunt”, Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer who focuses particularly on internet harassment and sexual assault litigation, told The Guardian. “As somebody who spends all day, every day working with actual victims of non-consensual porn and rapes that have videos and gone viral, I just thought: where are these guys, I’m going to come and hunt them down”.

Meanwhile Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino, who has recently been very vocal about sexual harassment within the music industry, tweeted: “Playing the victim and exploiting your fans as a PR stunt isn’t some bold, cutting edge shit – it’s just a real shitty asshole thing to do”.

For their part, Yacht denied such accusations, saying: “We never make light of victims of any form of sexual abuse. Frankly, it’s disturbing to us that press outlets could make the incredibly irresponsible leap from ‘celebrity sex tape’, which is the cultural trope this project explicitly references, to ‘revenge porn’, which is unfunny, disgusting, morally repugnant, and completely unrelated. Even within the fictional narrative we created, there was no violence or exploitation. It was always about agency and proactive empowerment”.

Aside from this statement suggesting that they’re unaware of what ‘revenge porn’ actually is, it’s perhaps worth noting that while they were still pretending that the sex tape was real, Yacht described its release as “an exploitation” by “one morally abject person”. They appeared to have forgotten that, even though they weren’t actually being exploited, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have been if the story hadn’t been a fabrication. Perhaps ‘the media’ should have been quicker to realise it was all a big joke, but to be fair, why would anyone reasonably think someone would make up shit like this to promote a new single?

Seemingly these are things that were pointed out to them, as the duo issued a second, more apologetic statement last night.

“First off, we’re sorry”, they began. “The reaction to this endeavor highlights a glaring error we made in positioning ourselves as the victims of a leaked sex tape. We understand that positioning it that way from the beginning was an egregious mistake, and are so ashamed we hadn’t considered this beforehand”.

They continued: “Yes, this was all a ‘hoax’ or ‘PR stunt’, and one we were so excited to share. While there is inherent deception in pulling a hoax, it was never our intention to mock or make light of anyone who has been a victim of a privacy violation like the one we mentioned. This was a lazy starting point for what we wanted to be a much more fun story about the expectations of a sex tape and the frenzy surrounding the taboo of sex, especially juxtaposed with our own non-celebrity. We failed to tell that story. Instead we told a much darker and more disturbing story”.

As for the video they had been building up to releasing they said that at this stage they were “leaning towards not releasing it at all”, but had decided that it was “important that people be able to see and assess for themselves our intent”. So you can watch and assess to your heart’s content here.

As well as apologising for their previous “shitty non-apology”, they concluded: “We should not have hinged this entire project on the fiction that we were the victims of a leaked tape, and we’re equally disappointed in ourselves for taking so long to get over being shocked at the response and write this apology”.



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